My town has a recycling center. One of the designated areas is for discarding electronics. It has been a bonanza for me and a few others. I havn't bought a new computer in years. Why? Because so many perfectly good computers are thrown out because they are "full." The denizens of the town are free to take whatever they want. It help keeps the cost of disposing of them down. I keep the best parts of them and assemble my own and run Ubuntu on them.
At any rate, I have been taking apart obsolete hard drives, CD-ROM R/W drives and other goodies. I take them apart for the wonderfully powerful magnets I find inside. I've found a number of good uses for them and th the other gizmos I find inside.
I've also disassembled a number of the laser diodes mechanisms used in the CD-ROM drives.
Has anyone found any interesting uses for the lasers in these mechanisims? If so, could you point me to a reference?
Al